A glance at the list of telephone numbers in the manager's office said a good many suppliers had changed, too. Some of the old bunch were probably dead. Some were more likely out of business. And some of the new ones had been giving Sloan kickbacks.
"Damned if you don't sound like Jerry Dover," said a butcher Jerry'd known for a long time.
"Yeah, it's me all right, Phil," Dover agreed. "So your days of fucking the Huntsman's Lodge are over, through, finished. Got it?"
"I wouldn't do that!" Phil the butcher sounded painfully pure of heart.
He gave Dover a pain, all right. "Yeah, and then you wake up," he said sweetly.
He also enjoyed introducing himself to the new suppliers. If they gave him what they said they would and gave him decent prices, he didn't expect to have any trouble with them. If they tried to palm crap off on him…He chuckled in anticipation. They'd find out. Boy, would they ever!
For tonight, the place would run on what Luis had laid in. From what Dover had seen, the boss cook hadn't done badly. If he didn't want the job-well, that made things easier all the way around.
Most of the time, Jerry stayed behind the scenes. He would only come out and show himself to the customers if somebody wasn't happy and the waiters couldn't set things right by themselves. Tonight, though, he felt not just an urge but an obligation to look around and make sure things ran smoothly. He didn't want Charlemagne Broxton to regret hiring him back.
Everything seemed all right. The Mexican waiters and busboys sounded different from the Negroes who'd been here before, but they knew what to do. He'd started hiring Mexicans during the war. He'd already seen that they weren't allergic to work.
The customers seemed happy. Some of them were locals. One or two even recognized him, which left him surprised and pleased. More were U.S. officers. They didn't know him from a hole in the wall, which suited him fine. If the local women with them did know him, they didn't let on.
Then, around ten o'clock, a woman waved to him. She wasn't local, which didn't mean he didn't know her. He wished he'd stayed in his office. Melanie Leigh waved again, imperiously this time. He didn't want to go over to the table she shared with a U.S. colonel, but he feared he had no choice.
"Hello, Jerry," she said, as brightly as if she hadn't been his blackmailing mistress and a likely Yankee spy. "Don, this is Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry Dover. We've been friends a long time. Jerry, this is Don Gutteridge."
"I'm very retired, Colonel Gutteridge," Dover said, hesitantly offering his hand.
Gutteridge shook it. He was about fifty, in good hard shape for his age. "You were in the Quartermaster Corps, isn't that right?" he said.
Dover nodded. "Uh-huh. How did you know?" He looked at Melanie. Her blue eyes might have been innocence itself…or they might not have. Knowing her, they probably weren't.
"Let me buy you a drink, Dover, and I'll tell you about it," Gutteridge said. "War's over. We can talk about some things now that we couldn't before."
At his wave, a waiter appeared. He ordered whiskey all around, asking Dover with his eyebrows if that was all right. Dover nodded. The waiter went away. Before the drinks came back, Dover asked, "Were you Melanie's…handler? Isn't that what the spies call it?"
"Yeah, I was, and yeah, that's what we call it," Gutteridge answered easily. "You almost got her caught, you know."
Jerry Dover shrugged, as impassively as he could. "I gave it my best shot. I could afford the money-and I got value received for it, too," he said. Melanie turned red; she was fair enough to make that obvious, even in the low light inside the Huntsman's Lodge. Dover went on, "I could afford that, yeah, but I didn't want to pass on any secrets. And so I talked to some of our own Intelligence boys, and…"
"I didn't even wait for the answer to the letter I sent you," Melanie said. "Something didn't feel right, so I took a powder."
The drinks arrived. Dover needed his. "How'd you land on me, anyway?" he said.
"In the trade, it's called a honey trap," Gutteridge answered for his former lover. "We ran 'em all over the CSA, with people we might be able to squeeze if push ever came to shove again. It wasn't like your people didn't run 'em in the USA, either."
"A honey trap. Oh, boy," Jerry Dover said in a hollow voice. He looked at Melanie. "I thought you meant it."
"With you…I came a lot closer than I did with some others," Melanie said.
"Great. Terrific." He finished the drink in a gulp. What did they say? A fool and his money are soon parted. He'd parted with money, and he'd been a fool. He'd needed a while to realize how big a fool he'd been, but here it was in all its glory. He got to his feet. "'Scuse me. I have to go back to work." Well, he wouldn't be that kind of fool again-he hoped. He hurried away from the table.
Y ou know what Mobile is?" Sam Carsten said.
"Tell me," Lon Menefee urged him.
"Mobile is what New Orleans would've been if it was settled by people without a sense of humor," Sam said. New Orleans was supposed to be a town where you could go out and have yourself some fun. People in Mobile looked as if they didn't enjoy anything.
"Boy, you've got something there," the exec said, laughing. "Even the good-time girls don't act like they're having a good time."
"Yeah, I know." Sam had seen that for himself. He didn't like it. "Pretty crazy-that's all I've got to tell you. This was a Navy town, too. If a bunch of horny, drunk sailors won't liven you up, what will?"
"Beats me," Menefee said.
Sam pointed. "Crap, that's their Naval Academy, right over there." It and the whole town lay under the Josephus Daniels' guns. Several C.S. Navy ships and submersibles lay at the docks. U.S. caretaker crews were aboard them. Sam didn't know what would happen to them. People were still arguing about it. Some wanted to take the captured vessels into the U.S. Navy. Others figured the spares problem would be impossible, and wanted to scrap them instead.
"Academy's out of business," Menefee said. Sam nodded. All the cadets had been sent home. They weren't happy about it. Some wanted to join the U.S. Navy instead. Some wanted to shoot every damnyankee ever born. They weren't quite old enough to have had their chance at that. The exec waved toward the Confederate warships. "What do you think we ought to do with those, sir?"
"Razor blades," Sam said solemnly. "Millions and millions of goddamn razor blades."
Menefee grinned. Anything large, metallic, and useless was only good for razor blades-if you listened to sailors, anyhow.
Here on the Gulf coast, winter was soft. Sam had wintered in the Sandwich Islands, so he'd known softer, but this wasn't bad. Things stayed pretty green. It hadn't snowed at all-not yet, anyhow. "A couple of more days and it's 1945," he said. "Another year down."
"A big one," Lon Menefee said. "Never been a bigger one."
He wasn't old enough to remember much about 1917. Maybe that had seemed bigger in the USA. Nobody then had known how awful a war could be. A lot of people were inoculated against that ignorance now. And 1917 had shown the USA could beat the Confederate States and their allies. Up till then, the United States never had. Now…Maybe now the USA wouldn't have to go and do this all over again. Sam could hope so, anyhow.
He didn't feel like arguing with the younger man, nor was he sure he should. "What with the superbomb and everything, I'd have a devil of a time saying you're wrong."
"We've got it," the exec said. "Germany's got it. The Confederates had it, but they're out. The limeys had it, but-"
"Maybe they're out," Sam put in. "You never can tell about England."
"Yeah," Menefee said. "Japan and Russia and France all have the hots for it."
"I would, too, if somebody else had it and I didn't," Sam said. "I remember how rotten I felt when Featherston got Philly. If he'd had a dozen more ready to roll, he might have whipped us in spite of everything."